Cataclysm Dungeon - Updated Loot List
More loot appeared on beta realms and we now have a good idea of what to expect in level 85 dungeons in normal mode. I'm not an expert in theorycrafting but I'm pretty sure that something like Wild Hammer will make you unequip your Shadowmourne. (Reminder: No screenshots yet, models aren't implemented)

Downranking
The problem with downranking that we hated, and the reason we killed it, wasn't because players were being clever by using cheaper heals when they needed a smaller heal. That's good gameplay and the kind of thing the new model should reward. The part of downranking that was broken, was that the coefficients matter so much more than the base points that you could maintain mana forever by casting a heal that was only slightly less effective. That wasn't gaming the numbers. That was breaking them. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Healing as ... retributionI said holy gear in a ret spec. And why would the heals be small? In a raid environment, the ret spec could have as much as 2000 more sp than a similarly geared holy paladin because of Sheath of Light and various buffs to AP. This alone would show how little scaling of healing spells the holy tree provides.
We'll look into it and make sure it's not viable. We've certainly had cases in the past where the conversion factors that let Ret not be terrible at healing look really attractive to someone actually wearing healing gear. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Heroic Leap
This ability has a lot of history because we tried it once before. For the Cataclysm version, we received a lot of feedback originally that Heroic Leap just didn't distinguish itself enough from Charge etc. any more. This is a world with Juggernaut and Warbringer after all. We discussed that feedback and understood where warriors were coming from, so we redesigned it so that players could choose where they would leap to. We think the current implementation has lot of different uses. No, it can't get you over canyons or up to ledges, but how often will those case legitimately arise? The potential exploits were the ability that unfettered would be enormous, and reducing those is what let us offer Heoic Leap as it is in the first place. It's a useful ability now. We can experiment with visual effect and height and that sort of thing. I understand from reading this thread that there are players who would design a different ability were they in our shoes. That's fine. This is a subjective business. (Source)

Slam
Slam is a controversial ability for sure, but we know there are Arms warriors who considered the height of skill of their class to be when they had to line up the Slam swing time in between their Mortal Strikes. It's not for everyone, for sure, but with Improved Slam and Bloodsurge and being able to move, it really isn't asking too much of you. Yeah you'll screw it up sometimes, but it won't be a catastrophic dps loss when you do.

We've seen just a ton of feedback in the past few weeks on lots of different abilities for different classes that essentially comes down to "X is too hard to use." We think overall that WoW's combat is pretty forgiving. We really don't think this is the time where we need to be making everything much harder to screw up. Simple is good. Confusing is bad. But abilities or rotations that are challenging are good for the game to a point. (Source)

MMO Report
Someone stole Casey for the week, but the MMO Report is still around!

I wonder if Blizzard looks at these items and their stats and seriously think "oh yes, this is going well!". If I look at those stats I become seriously depressed. Not because of the high numbers, but because they are sooo boring. I miss items with a wide variety of stats like hit, crit, haste and armor penetration.

Especially the tank trinket,... come on how is just 252 dodge rating exciting? Looking at these items and stats I don't feel at all like "yes, I want to upgrade my items!", or "yes, I want to farm instances for these items!" (a feeling which I had when TBC and Wotlk came out).

I'm fairly certain for most tanks the answer would be yes that is exciting.

What I found exciting is essence of gossamer. A bunch of stamina and a fun proc effect. Same with the Black Heart, etc. Or nice Use: effects, like the Corroded Skeleton Key. Now "just" 252 dodge rating isn't really that exciting. And remember, while the number looks high, it probably is no more than about 3-5% dodge *at most* at level 85.

Boub, there's two cloaks and two trinkets you have labelled purely as 'Heal.' However these would potentially be awesome +Hit caster cloaks for both Moonkin and Elemental shammies. Even the +mana feature on the trinkets is hard to pigeonhole as healer in Cata it seems, since mana will be more of an issue for offensive specs as well.

So yeah, apart from actual Cloth items, I don't think you can take +spirit to mean 'healer'?

Edit: Same applies to rings.

I tought they were making spirit once again main mana ressource and were getting rid of mana per 5 rule, except for procs or on use. They have also removed any talent that made spirit worth for casters...and this will make me get rid of all my lock epics from lvl81.

---------- Post added 2010-09-07 at 12:08 PM ----------

Originally Posted by pbean

What I found exciting is essence of gossamer. A bunch of stamina and a fun proc effect. Same with the Black Heart, etc. Or nice Use: effects, like the Corroded Skeleton Key. Now "just" 252 dodge rating isn't really that exciting. And remember, while the number looks high, it probably is no more than about 3-5% dodge *at most* at level 85.

But it's a lvl83 trinket, and blue for what it matters...meaning epic one is probably have more dodge rating and probably +stam or on use/proc effect.

What I found exciting is essence of gossamer. A bunch of stamina and a fun proc effect. Same with the Black Heart, etc. Or nice Use: effects, like the Corroded Skeleton Key. Now "just" 252 dodge rating isn't really that exciting. And remember, while the number looks high, it probably is no more than about 3-5% dodge *at most* at level 85.

essence of gossamer is a heroic dungeon drop, the other trinket drops in a normal instance.

You know, now Casey is going to have to go shirtless to go along with his guest host being shirtless.

---------- Post added 2010-09-08 at 08:41 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Skandulous

blizz said healers will have way more mana problems than dps who use mana. all dps specs that use mana have talents to keep their mana up while dpsing

Blizzard has said time and time again that offensive casters should NOT be worrying about mana. They have said that if they are worrying about mana then they will make adjustments to the classes themselves. They have no intention for casters to use mana regeneration type items.